In the first days of the Iranian New Year holiday in March, the police showed up at a cafe in Tehran with orders to shut it down for two days. The cafe had run afoul of Iranian law by serving women who were not covering their hair with head scarves, they said.
Since then, the cafe’s management has been summoned repeatedly by the authorities and ordered to warn customers to wear their scarves. Mohammad, the owner, grudgingly did the bare minimum, putting a sign on the wall telling women to respect the hijab law. There is little point in doing more, he said.
Emboldened since the women-led protests that broke out last fall, which turned into nationwide demonstrations against the Islamic Republic, growing numbers of Iranian women have started going around without head scarves and wearing Western-style clothes. In Iran, Mohammad said, forcing women to wear the hijab is a lost cause.
“In all honesty, we didn’t get upset when they shut down our cafe,” said Mohammad, who asked to be identified only by his first name to avoid further legal repercussions. “In fact, we felt good about it, because this is really good P.R. for us and our business.”
His nonchalance suggested the depth and speed of change in Iran, where the theocratic government considers the dress code a matter of existential importance. As temperatures rise and more women go out in outfits that run flagrantly afoul of the law mandating modest clothing, official efforts to enforce it could intensify the conflict between Iranians and their clerical rulers.
